Since their inception, Magdalena Bay have been enthusiastic and discerning world builders. Like magpies, they’ve gathered fragments of diverse musical tropes, Internet culture, and the nostalgia of previous generations. Over time, they’ve assembled an aesthetic that is now all their own, to the point where their influences no longer feel curated but sublimated into an aesthetic that’s at once digestible, delectable, and erudite.
The duo of Mica Tenebaum and Matt Lewin hides their virtuosity in plain sight. The music feels effortless, like vivid prose writing. Think of the difference between Haruki Murakami’s simple sentences and the discipline he exerts on them, and those of hack horror or genre writers. This isn’t to say Magdalena Bay is simple, but the synth-pop idioms they work in just don’t historically hold the gravitas as, say, jazz. But genre is just a conduit for their creative brilliance—they shapeshift with each listener, and you can also appreciate them solely as a party band.
As their confidence and ambition grew, their visuals likewise evolved. Before their breakthrough album Imaginal Disc, Matt and Mica created their own music videos—clever, home-grown works that suggested they could’ve just as easily attended art school as music school. “Secrets (Your Fire)” in particular is a pastiche of vaporwave aesthetics and Gen-X nostalgia (they make the Miami Vice color palette pop like they invented it). Only with the Imaginal Disc singles did they hand over directing duties, and the videos became less personal projects and more promotional tools. Yet they remained rich with meaning.
Foremost among them is “Image,” directed by Please Baby Please film-maker Amanda Kramer. It’s unsettling if not horrific. And not in the “Everlong” tongue-in-cheek way (the Foo Fighters could never get away with the layered meanings Magdalena Bay bring to a track and video). Mica—the exuberant vocal half of the pair—playing a character named True, is menaced, snipped at, and actually cut up by a robed star god/cosmetologist on one hellacious spa day. Anyone who has been chased in a dream and felt their limbs go sluggish and non-reactive (and I assume this is most people) will recognize the claustrophobic dread that is amplified by the dream state. Mica’s diminutive frame only heightens the sense of menace as she flees across a cosmic, hyper-synthetic nightmare. And he’s just so big, compared to the singer. This is a change from the usual dynamic, where Mica is riding dragons, beating down Clippy widgets, or breaking the fourth wall with a wink.
But as much as adding depth to a dance song, the video has captured what literary critics call ‘the uncanny.’ The uncanny lives in that liminal space where the familiar turns strange, where reality warps just enough to induce dread. It can range from the works of Murakami to Aimee Bender, Leonora Carrington, and, some say, Kafka. It is the commonplace waiting room of “Image” that turns into a showcase for Eraserhead extras, whose carved-into-flesh smiles come off more as mutations than expressions, radiating the menace in the mundane.
The video is propulsive, and there’s little room to breathe. In her quest to ‘upgrade’ her image, True offers, sacrificially almost, her stylized dancing, and you can enjoy the grammar of sex appeal, though the underlying message is one of threat and conformity, with the singer as a willing final girl. Sex and death are forever the deepest drivers of our dreamscape, no matter the genre.
It’s fitting, then, that the next track on Imaginal Disc is “Death and Romance.” Matt and Mica clearly understand more than how to drop a single—they understand how to build an album. Imaginal Disc might be the first-ever synth-pop concept album. The sequencing matters—almost quaintly so—and yet the songs still stand alone. Like any great concept album, its parts cohere without sacrificing independence.
Ultimately, in “Image” and Imaginal Disc, there’s an intimate menace at work in the duo’s vision, one that fracks the depths of an ambitious vinyl collection. It’s pop that transports, yet remains grounded. In the end, Magdalena Bay is more wormhole than rabbit hole, blowing you away while leaving you standing on your feet.
I write more on the uncanny in my memoir, Strange as Angels.
My playlist for this post, Imaginal Desk.
Matt Henderson Ellis 